Messiah by Jonathan Keates

Author:Jonathan Keates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2017-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

8

A WORK IN PROGRESS

None of Handel’s scores necessarily represents what might be called his last word on the subject. Like other Baroque composers, he saw any composition as being inherently adaptable to circumstance, a work in continual development, open to changes and available to him as a thematic resource or as a piece from which individual segments or numbers could be adapted to other uses. Nowhere is this idea more obvious than in Messiah, whose potential during Handel’s lifetime for alteration, rewriting or at least recasting is testimony to its toughness and resilience, in both concept and design. The inherent force within Handel’s creation, its hold on listeners and performers, derives in significant measure from the oratorio’s ability to withstand everything he did to it once the draft score was completed in September 1741. This initial autograph was copied as a performing score for Handel by his secretary and assistant John Christopher Smith, and it was on this score that he based his subsequent changes to different sections of the work.

Once in Ireland Handel would need to alter individual items, sometimes vestigially, sometimes completely overhauling them, according to the particular vocal character and talent of his performers. We should remember that apart from the soprano Cristina Maria Avolio and the violinist and concert-master Matthew Dubourg, he had no idea before setting off on the voyage from Parkgate of the singers and instrumentalists available to him on reaching Dublin. There was work to be done before Messiah’s first rehearsals, a process of revision that would also succeed in tightening the oratorio’s sinews as a whole and sharpening its effectiveness among those listeners lucky enough to encounter the piece at its very first performance.

A good example of this earliest layer of rewriting is ‘But who may abide the day of his coming?’, initially cast as an air for bass in a lilting 3/8 before Handel altered it, at this stage, to a recitative, possibly because it had proved too taxing for John Mason, the soloist originally designated from among the singing men, known as lay vicars, of Christ Church and St Patrick’s. Perhaps this was also a contributory factor in changes made to ‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together’, but the result is aesthetically more satisfying in the way the aria’s new shape seems to mirror the anarchy and destructiveness evoked by the words, so that the exultant ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’ gains an additional edge of spontaneity. Further cutting at this stage improved ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’, somewhat too prolix in its earliest incarnation as a da capo aria. For this new version Handel retained the original 12/8 time signature while removing the da capo indication and recycled some of the cancelled material to make up a more tautly effective close.

It was for Susanna Cibber that he made two of the most significant revisions to the score before its first performance. The musicologist Charles Burney recalled that ‘her voice was a thread and her knowledge

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.